clansandguildsfandomcom-20200213-history
Clans and Guilds Wiki:Manual of Style
This Manual of Style outlines a standard of clean, consistent formatting for articles on this wiki. The formatting described here is a guideline and can be overridden where circumstances warrant it. These guidelines will never be unerringly perfect for every situation. However, please try your best to keep to the advice outlined in this article so others may use your edits as an example when creating and editing their own articles. These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for this wiki, but a more expansive set of style guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at Wikipedia Manual of Style. Article layout One of the most important parts of wiki editing is how to structure an article. The structure is a powerful thing: it dictates what information the reader reads and when he or she reads it. It can influence what people contribute, where it goes, and how it might be written. Structure has the power to inform or confuse the same way good or bad writing does. Keep a well structured article, and you're more likely to have a high quality one. Organize sections in an article in a hierarchical structure like you would an outline. Keep it logical, but feel free to forsake strict logic for readability. Wherever possible, try to have an introduction for each section. Just like the article as a whole, the section should start with an introduction and then have its subsections below it. Try using a shallow structure rather than a deep one. Too many nested sections usually leads to a confusing or unreadable article. Above all, keep your layout consistent. Don't throw your reader a curve ball too often. The following sections will offer some good advice on keeping your articles clean, consistent, and clear. Template messages, disambiguation and stubs Unless a message pertains to a specific section of the article, any cleanup, maintenance, or similar templates should be placed at the top of the page, ahead of the article and its content. Template Messages are commonly used to address any simple, but consistent, issues within an article to other users and administrators; especially in cases where it’s easier than utilizing the articles talk page. A full list of Template Messages, as well as other useful templates, can be found here: Template Messages This also applies to stub and disambiguation messages, should they apply. Information boxes Though they won’t apply to every article, Infoboxes are a great way to express an article’s subject in a clean and summarized manner; especially those that are generally large in nature. Infoboxes usually include basic information about the article subject, without delving into too much detail, but still allowing enough for any reader to gain what he/she might need to know. These boxes, if used, should always be included before the lead section, but they will always be nested to the right of the article for easy readability. The types of Infoboxes will change depending on what type of article is being written, so be sure that if one is going to be applied that it is the correct one. A full list of Infoboxes, and their uses, can be found here for convenience: Template Messages/Infoboxes. Lead section The most important part of the article will be, majority of the time, the lead introductory section. Unlike following sections this one needs no title or header. The purpose of the lead section is to provide a quick overview/summary of the entire article, usually dictating why the subject is interesting or notable, and should only be about one or two paragraphs long. In every situation, the article name should be mentioned and bolded within the first two sentences. Try and keep this section void of unnecessary details, and instead keep it simple and concise. The point is to draw readers into reading the rest of the article, but also to give them all the information they should need to know within this first section so that they shouldn’t have to. In essence, it should include the most up to date information on the subject. For short articles, the lead section should not have to be included. Table of contents A table of contents will automatically appear in articles with a minimum of four headings (unless forced by the below options). By default this will be left-aligned above the first section heading. * To the force a TOC position (left-aligned): __TOC__ * To completely remove the TOC from a page: The table of contents can be right-aligned - but only if it is very long (over 15 entries) and an information box is not occupying the top-right corner of the article (rare exceptions exist). * Right-aligned TOC that floats next to text: Main Article : “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs” -- Stephen King We now come to the meat of an article: the words themselves. When you're editing wikis, you're both academic and artist. You have to be accurate, but you also have to be interesting. Neither one can dominate; you have to skillfully balance both. Keep your writing concise. Don't use two words where one will do. Keeping your writing simple will make it easy to understand and easy to expand on. Use complete sentences whenever possible. When you write, use grammar as a toolbox: know the rules, but only break them on purpose. Check your spelling and grammar. Do not use 'u' in place of 'you' or '2' in place of 'to'. Write the way you would for a class paper or a newspaper article. Keep all of the topics you cover within the scope of the article. What that means is, you don't need to give a detailed history of humans on the page about Winston Churchill. Consider the article's title as your point of origin and write from that perspective. Make use of the wiki's ability to link to more detailed articles or external sources for more information. Write from an impersonal perspective.' Do not use "I." For example, do not write, "Hellscream was a fervent member of the Horde. He served both the Old and New Horde, As far as I know." Avoid drawing attention to the author (yourself) as much as possible. Be bold. If you know something is wrong, correct it. If you think you could word something better, write it. If an article has a glaring deficiency, fill it. Even if your first attempt isn't golden, you can fix it later or someone else will come along and fix it for you. Don't be afraid to screw up. See also, references, external links, and navigational tables The last sections, if they exist, should always be "See also", followed by "References", followed by "External links". In the case of "See also", use bullets to list the internal links. Under the references section should be placed . Finally, in the external links should be all external links. Categories Categories should be added to the end of an article - a full list can be found on . They take the form Category:Categoryname. All articles should be accessible starting from Category:Browse, via subcategories. Section headings Use the (two equal signs) style markup for main headings, equivalent to . Do not use a single =. This is because a single = creates an heading which is already used by the page header and would be bad coding. Also, do not use wikilinks in subject headings. When edited, these sections become confusing in the edit history because of the link code. Consider instead putting the word in the first or second sentence of the section and linking it there. Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading and leave all of the other letters in lowercase. Use "Founding and history", not "Founding and History". Note that this is different from most section title rules you'll encounter elsewhere. Avoid special characters in headings, such as an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]). In place of the ampersand, use the word "and" unless the ampersand is part of a formal name. Always keep headings short and simple. Headings are guidelines to your page's structure and should inform the reader rather than confuse. To keep it short, avoid unnecessary words or redundancy in headings, i.e. avoid a, an, and the, pronouns, repeating the article title, and so on. Also, try to avoid giving identical titles to different sections. Images Images make an article memorable and pretty. They can speak where words fail. At the same time, misplaced or untidy images can detract from an article. When choosing images, keep in mind placement, size, and the appropriateness of the image to the section. Let images flow with the text instead of break it up. Large images such as screenshots should use the "thumb" (example: ) option which displays large images as thumbnails. Images should generally be right aligned to enhance readability by allowing a smooth flow of text down the left margin - the "thumb" option does this by default. If an infobox is not being used in an article, a right aligned picture in the lead section is encouraged. For more information, see . Navigation boxes Navigation boxes can use or be based off . Generally they should be placed at the end of an article, above the categories. Expand with more details and examples. Disambiguation A disambiguation line is sometimes put at the beginning of an article to link to another article with the same or similar title. The line should be italicized and indented once. Most usually contain the phrase, "Were you looking for X?" For example: : Were you looking for "The Battle of Terrafield", an official novel? The template can also be used for this purpose. Quotations Format a long quote (over four lines) as an italicized block quotation, which will be indented from both margins. Do not enclose the block quote in quotation marks. To format a block quotation, do not use the wiki indentation mark ":" — instead, use the HTML element. Grammar Grammar is a writer's toolbox. You can't build good sentences without knowing how to use your tools. Since a wiki article must be as clear as possible for all the people reading it, editors must keep close to correct grammar standards to ensure clear communication. Capitalization Titles such as lord or king start with a capital letter when used as a title (followed by a name): "King Arthas", not "king Arthas". When used generically, they should be in lower case: "Furion is a powerful lord." The correct formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun. Hence: "Anduin is the current King of Stormwind." Classes should only be capitalized when used as a proper noun, i.e. as someone's name. ("Warlock, go be evil" versus "That warlock is quite evil.") Conclusion Every article can be improved (even this one). Following these guidelines will not ensure a perfect article the first time, but it will give the article a stronger skeleton. It's ultimately your job as an editor to put meat on it. See also * Rules *Layout Guide External links * Wikipedia's Manual of Style * ''UNSC Marine Corps'' on Halopedia * ''Development of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion'' on Wikipedia * ''Assassin's Creed'' on Assassin's Creed Wiki Category:Organisation